Callum Innes Artists Buttons

Callum Innes Artists Buttons

Callum Innes
Buttons, 2023
Glazed porcelain, in three colour variations
Button dmensions: 45 x 35mm
Set of four, in an edition of 40

The buttons have been hand sewn onto an A5 cards. Each card is numbered, dated and signed by the artist and presented in a bespoke box designed by A Practice for Everyday Life.

Callum Innes has created a series of buttons in a style closely related to his abstract paintings and prints. The form of the buttons is based on objects in Innes’ home and studio in Edinburgh. The overall shape is cast from the thumb aperture of a vintage wooden artist’s palette and the relief on the button is an imprint of a 4,000-year-old Persian sculpture onto the porcelain forms.

The three colour variations of the buttons produce intriguing effects. The black and white buttons have a simple, bold appearance. The green-hued buttons, created by applying several layers of glaze from the East Lothian area in Scotland, take on a metallic look. The luminous lilac-blue buttons capture Innes’ technique of establishing a play between painting and un-painting.

Callum Innes is renowned for a distinctive process of addition and subtraction, exploring the varied effects of painting a surface and then thinning or dissolving the original colour.

About the Artists Buttons project

Ten leading artists, Ai Weiwei, Jonathan Anderson, Rana Begum, Edmund de Waal, Antony Gormley, Callum Innes, Jennifer Lee, Cornelia Parker, Vicken Parsons & Caroline Walker, have been creating limited edition sets of buttons in support of Kettle’s Yard.

The project draws inspiration from the exhibition, ‘Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery’, recently at Kettle’s Yard and from 14 July 2023 – 7 January 2024 at the Holburne Museum in Bath. In 1938, Lucie Rie fled her home in Vienna for London to escape the Nazi persecution of Jewish people. During the war, unable to get a licence to make pots, Rie turned to making ceramic buttons for the fashion industry, experimenting on a miniature scale with new forms and coloured glazes.

Read more about the Artist Buttons project on the Kettle’s Yard blog

Please note purchases of Artists Buttons per customer must not exceed £8,500. Any order exceeding £8,500 will not be processed.